15 October 2014

Welcome back, Erica Monroe!

Thank you so much for having me again at
History Hoydens! It’s such a joy to be here. Today I’d like to tell you a
little about the setting of my latest novel in my historical romantic suspense Rookery
Rogues series, Secrets in Scarlet. Now, a rookery is an old term for the poorer
neighborhoods in London (basically the slums).

While the first book in the series (A
Dangerous Invitation) largely took place in the Ratcliffe rookery down by
Wapping and the London Docks, Secrets in Scarlet is contained to the
Spitalfields rookery in East London. Spitalfields borders up against the
surrounding rookeries of Bishopgate and Whitechapel.

Spitalfields wasn’t
always a rookery though—once it was a busy community teeming with prosperity.
The area was home to many Huguenot weavers, who when they emigrated from France
they brought with them the secrets of the silk weaving in Lyons. The entire
family would help weave on draw looms or hand looms.

Everyone in Britain wanted silk woven by
these ex-French weavers. Skilled weavers were certainly not a dime a dozen, and
though the process was incredibly time-consuming, they were able to make a
better living than they would in many of the other occupations available to the
lower class.

But during the 1820’s, all that changed.
Britain revoked the Spitalfields Act, and now people could trade freely with
France, so the Spitalfields weavers were no longer the ones producing this silk.
Coupled with the new machinery that dramatically reduced production times—and
the need for so many weavers—the small town descended into hardship. As Charles
Dickens states in his 1851 “Spitalfields” article for the Household Worlds journal, “From fourteen to seventeen thousand
looms are contained in from eleven to twelve thousand houses – although at the
time at which we write, not more than nine to ten thousand are at work.” Most
of the production moved to factories in Manchester or Lancashire that utilized
steam power. In my upcoming novella Beauty
and the Rake, my heroine, Abigail has weaved—either in a factory or in her
own home—since she was a child, and it’s all she knows.

In Secrets
in Scarlet, I created a factory that exists on White Lion Street. This
factory has somewhat factual basis, because it was marked on a map I found of
the Spitalfields/Whitechapel areas during the Ripper slayings (so as to whether
or not there was a factory actually on this site in 1832, your guess is as good
as mine, but I thought it was an interesting coincidence). My textile factory
solely does the weaving of the raw silk, so no steam power is needed. My
heroine, Poppy O’Reilly, goes to work as a weaver in this factory not only to
pay rent, etc, but so that she can save up enough money for her daughter to attend
a finishing school someday.

The new attachment made by Joseph Marie
Jacquard hastened the downfall of these skilled weavers. I show this loom in Secrets in Scarlet, as my heroine Poppy
works in a textile factory devoted to the weaving of silk. Though it’s often
referred to as a “Jacquard loom,” it’s actually an attachment that can be used
with many mechanical looms. It could be operated by one person, and because of
its punch card system, suddenly it was possible to work complex patterns into
the silk without having to reset the loom each time. You’ll see in the next
picturethat a portrait of Jean Marie Jacquard was actually woven on his
jacquard loom! (I find this terribly clever and punny.) Modifications of this
loom are still in use today in many clothing factories. In fact, because of its
punch card system, the jacquard attachment is cited as one of the first steps
toward modern computing.

For Poppy, the Jacquard loom makes her feel
independent and in control. She’s in London under an assumed name, so that
people won’t find out she’s really not a war widow—and that her daughter isn’t
legitimate. It’s exhausting, excruciating work in the factory, from sun up to
sun down, but it allows her to at least be able to make an honest living.
Surrounded by immigrants like herself (she came to England from County Cork as
a child), she feels at home. I loved being able to draw these parallels between
residents struggling to embrace the changes forced upon them, to Poppy and her
fight against society’s harmful views of her life.

Today, Spitalfields still boasts a charming
community. One of my favorite blogs for research during writing Secrets in Scarlet was Spitalfields Life
(http://spitalfieldslife.com). I
hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Book
blurb:

When a girl is murdered at a factory in one
of London’s rookeries, Sergeant Thaddeus Knight of the Metropolitan Police
comes in to investigate. But it’s not just the factory owners that Thaddeus
wants information on–the devilishly intriguing Poppy O’Reilly is a puzzle he’d
like nothing more than to solve.

Protecting her young daughter is the most
important thing to Poppy, and Thaddeus threatens the false identity she’s
carefully constructed. The last thing she should do is allow Thaddeus close to
her family, yet she can’t stay away from him. With danger around the corner,
will the secrets of a scarlet woman lead to their undoing?

Erica Monroe is a USA Today Bestselling
Author of emotional, suspenseful romance. Her debut novel, A Dangerous
Invitation, was nominated in the published historical category for the
prestigious 2014 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Romantic Suspense.
When not writing, she is a chronic TV watcher, sci-fi junkie, lover of pit
bulls, and shoe fashionista. She lives in the suburbs of North Carolina with
her husband, two dogs, and a cat.